File No. 821.032/22
The Chargé in Colombia ( Belden) to the Secretary of State
Sir: I have the honor to inform the Department that the extraordinary session of the Colombian Congress called for the 20th of this month was opened to-day and to transmit herewith three copies of the address made by the President of the Republic.1
As was reported in my cablegram of May 27 last, Congress has been called in special session for the purpose of discussing financial conditions in view of the acute economic crisis which the Government has been suffering and which has been reported to the Department on several occasions. …
In his message to Congress the President refers to the treaty of April 6, 1914, pending the ratification of the Senate of the United States in the following terms:
In the report to Congress of the Minister for Foreign Affairs of last year, as in previous years, an account was given of the steps taken by the Colombian Government to obtain the approbation of that pact (the treaty) which, having been proposed by the Government of the United States and on the basis presented by that Government, it was expected would have been approved without delay.
Perhaps because these reports are not sufficiently known, at times it is given to understand that the attitude of the Government of Colombia or its representatives may have had an influence on the paralyzation of that matter. If any data be lacking for the forming of a just judgment in this regard the respective commissions of the chambers can study the correspondence of the Legation in Washington, as the instructions received by it clearly show what the Government has done, within legal and decorous bounds, to the end of terminating an affair of such consequence.
For the public authorities of Colombia the named convention is a law and, consequently, the attitude respecting it which the Executive power has observed is none other than the same respect which it guards in relation to all laws. Nothing which tended to weaken it or which implied ignorance of the will of the Legislature could the Government have proposed or accepted without assuming for itself the faculties of another power, and without failing in one of its first duties.
In relation to Colombia’s attitude toward the present World War the President urges a strict neutrality and refers to Colombia’s weakness as shown by her inability to make her voice heard during 15 years in “one of the most indisputable demands of justice among those registered in history.”
[Page 228]Speaking of the financial condition of the Government and relative to a foreign loan the message says:
With regard to the arranging of a loan abroad respecting which some insinuations have been received, besides the general obstacles known in order to bring it about, which have already been seen in the attempts in that regard made by the municipality of Bogotá and by the Compañía del Ferrocaril del Pacíflco (Pacific Railroad Company), the Government has believed, as it has already publicly manifested, that it is its duty to abstain from that class of loans which might involve the danger of bringing the Republic to the state in which other Spanish American countries find themselves, whose said situation is a living example for those statesmen who see sound conservation of national sovereignty, security and dignity as the supreme necessity and as the most imperative of their duties and who have not forgotten what are the consequences of resolving fiscal difficulties with transactions which open the road to irreparable losses. …
I have [etc.]
- Not printed.↩